The War of the Roses: The Children (5 page)

“You've sure figured it out,” Josh said, genuinely stunned but starting to feel amused by her explanation. “You make it sound like an ice-cream break.”

“Not a bad image, Josh. Especially if you think ice cream cone. I love to lick it down to the nub.”

“Jesus,” Josh mumbled. She reached out for him again. Despite the recent episode, he did not fail to react.

“See. It has a mind of its own. Let it run free, Josh. This has nothing to do with home and hearth. The heart stays out of it. No references to that other world. Above all, no emotional involvement.
Capish
?”

Emotional involvement? The idea scared the hell out of him.

“I'm not so sure it's possible to hide these things,” he said, sensing that his protest had lost all steam.

“I'm not in this for trouble, Josh. I promise. Trust me.”

She squeezed him there and winked and headed for the door.

“And I love that ice cream cone you're carrying,” she said, pausing, turning. “Just make sure there's plenty left for me.”

So far it was six months of nerve-wracking danger, a miracle of ingenuity and luck. They had done it in his parked car in the office garage, in his office, empty offices, in stairwells, bathrooms, telephone booths, even movie houses, never hotels or the apartments of single friends. No sexual activity was verboten. They left no sexual stone unturned. It was frenzied, wild, crazy. All done during the working day. Sometimes two or three times. Once four. As far as they knew, no one suspected.

The danger itself became a turn-on, heightening their pleasure. It was unrelenting madness. He had become an addict. Time and again his mind told him he wanted to break it off. But his body told him otherwise and he never succeeded in mustering the courage to call it a day. Angela had entered his sexual psyche. She was even there when he made love to Victoria, a pallid and less frequent occurrence, which, he hoped, she attributed to overwork. It took more and more effort to close the compartment door.

Lately, this other thing had emerged, the feared emotional involvement. He hungered for Angela when he was away from her. It defied his comprehension. He felt himself being sucked deeper and deeper into an emotional whirlpool. He had followed his bliss and it had taken him straight to a wild hell of ecstasy and sexual gluttony.

He was not happy until he saw Angela's face in the morning. He wrote her little unsigned notes on yellow stickums. He whispered bizarre endearments on the telephone in the office and insisted that she wear no panties. In what was certainly a fit of madness he bought her an 18-carat gold slave bracelet, which he insisted she wear only in the office or when they had sex. It was engraved with the words: “My delicious whore. J.” She loved it.

Sometimes he sent her flowers or candy, always paid for in cash to avoid Victoria's detection when she went over the credit card bills. Was he falling in love? Not once did he use the word, not in his notes or on the telephone or when they were having sex. But he thought about it. He wanted to say it. Worse, he wanted to hear her say it.

Their public office conduct, they were certain, was exemplary.

“See. We can hide things,” she told him.

“Not from ourselves.”

“You're right. I don't.”

It seemed a strange answer and he questioned it.

“What does that mean?”

“I confess my sins to my priest. A few Hail Marys and I'm unburdened. My sins are forgiven. That's why it's so nice to be a Catholic. You should try it sometime.”

At this admission, his pores had opened and his entire body became moist.

“You what?” He was stunned.

“I confess. No big deal. I've done it since I was a little girl.”

“You tell him everything?”

“Of course.”

“He's only a man, Angela. He'll talk.”

“His vows will not let him. He is constrained by them. He absorbs everyone's secret sins. That's his mission.”

“You're frightening me, Angela.”

“Don't be. This will chase the fear,” she said, lifting her skirt.

The hardest part was keeping his home life completely separate. He felt like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Wasn't his life with Victoria and his children his first priority? Sometimes he was tortured with doubt. Guilt plagued him. Nevertheless, he clung to the concept that the family was sacrosanct, inviolable. It will burn out, he assured himself, but his assurances were losing steam.

How could he ever explain that, when they were together, he turned off his cell phone, making it a deliberate act of separation, as if home and family did not exist during those stolen, guilty moments of excruciating pleasure?

***

He dared not get out of bed or show his restlessness. Victoria would question him out of concern and he would have to compound the lie. It might also provide a hint that he might be questioning her faith in Michael's truthfulness. Considering his own tattered credibility in that department, how could he maintain such faith in his own son, despite his upbringing, despite their solemn pact of total family openness and scrupulous honesty between them?

Feeling his thoughts wander backward in memory, he let it happen, following the path to the very beginning between them, the initial engagement.

***

“Are you squeamish?”

These were her first words to him from behind her desk, a long polished table on which lay various odd knickknacks. Later he would learn they were part of her treasured Victoriana collection. The office was small, the table taking up almost its entire width. He sat on a straight-backed wooden chair. Behind her was a large window overlooking the bustle of Manhattan. He recognized City Hall and the leaf-strewn park in front of it. It was autumn, mid-October, windy and bleak.

He had entered through double wooden doors on which were emblazoned in gold letters the names of the various tenants, an export company, a manufacturer's rep, a couple of lawyers. Hers was the last name on the list, the lowest down, Victoria Stewart, Counselor at Law. He had busted up his Honda, broken a few ribs in the process, and a casual friend, a local bartender in Greenwich Village, had recommended her.

He had come into the bar walking stiff, and it pained him to hop on the barstool. He hadn't intended any legal action. He was actually more at fault than the cab driver with whom he had collided. But the bartender was persistent and persuasive and he recommended this ball-busting female attorney. He had dismissed the idea until the next morning, when it hurt to get out of bed.

She was younger than he, tall and on the thin side, with only her eyes made up with black eyeliner. No lipstick, no anything between her alabaster skin and his gaze. She had black hair cut into casual bangs and he noted that her lips seemed pugnacious, a long bow for an upper lip and an aggressive lower lip, leaving an opening for snow white teeth to be exhibited. If you're going to be a ball-buster, he concluded, this is the way to look, cool and beautiful with a mouth poised for love or talk.

The emotional pull was apparent immediately. He knew it then, defying logic and resistance. Later he would explain it as Cupid's arrow getting him in the gut. He did not know that another arrow from the same quiver had gotten Victoria in a similar place.

He hadn't answered her immediately since the question about his squeamishness and everything else about her was so unexpected. With her spotless and crisp white blouse, her strangely cluttered desk, her thin wrists, the left wound with a distinctively masculine watch with a leather band, the right sporting a thin gold-linked bracelet, she exuded the no-nonsense aura of someone who knew exactly where the soft spots were.

The details of her office were embedded in his mind, the diplomas on the wall, New York University Bachelor of Arts, another from Brooklyn Law School, a law degree, the bric-a-brac-covered desk, the neat piles of file folders, piled edge to edge, the sure sign of an organized mind. There was barely room for two file cabinets.

Because he was distracted by intense observation, she had to repeat the question.

“Squeamish? About what?”

“I'm in negligence law. Used to call us ambulance chasers. Some still do. This is the ass-end of the law business. I take 40 percent plus expenses. That makes us partners. I'm the partner who does the work and takes the risks. I win for you. I win for myself. The deal is that I lead you through the minefield and you follow, blindly and without question. If your sense of morality is too rigid, there's the door.”

“You haven't heard my story.”

“On the phone you said you think you've got some busted ribs. That's good, but not enough to get the blood-sucking insurance company to open its pocketbook. It's a game, you see. We over-claim. They under-claim. We meet somewhere in the middle. It's bullshit from beginning to end. Once in a while, they have to show their muscle and they take us to court. Sometimes we get outlandish in our claims just to keep them in line. Every body part has its price. Ribs are a start, but not a clincher by themselves. We must exaggerate the pain and the hardship.”

“How do we do that?”

“We have doctors who know how to make a thorough diagnosis.”

She was all business, making no attempt to ingratiate or charm. Later she would admit that the arrow had entered her psyche. She would be as confused as he. It was the primal mystery. When all secrets were unlocked by time and science this one would remain.

“Do you understand what I'm saying?” she asked.

“Perfectly. You're inviting me into your scam.”

He had half-expected to be asked to leave. Instead, she studied his face. Then she nodded and smiled, not broadly, but enough to engage him irrevocably. The enticement, he realized even then, was not primarily the money.

She had him sign the appropriate papers and the next thing he knew he was following her blindly through, as she put it, the minefield, being examined after hours in a Brooklyn clinic by a little brown man from India who introduced himself as Dr. Singh.

“Veddy dire,” he said looking grave, speaking in singsong English. He had put finger pressure on Josh's cracked ribs. “Veddy dire.”

“That bad, Doc?”

“Veddy complicated.”

“Really?”

“It troubles you to breathe?”

“When I do it deeply, which is not often.”

“You feel pain when you jog?”

“I don't jog.”

“But you would if you did.”

He shrugged.

“Would I?” he asked. He had all he could do to contain his laughter.

“My diagnosis is that all movement must be veddy difficult,” the doctor said.

“Not all…,” he began. The doctor cut his comment short.

“What of sexual congress?”

“Congress?” Josh chuckled. “Are we talking politics here?”

“This is no laughing matter, Mister…,” the doctor said, looking at the card he had filled out. “Rose.”

“All right then, the fact is that I've had no congress since the accident.” And not much before, he had thought. Such congress encouraged relationships, of which he was wary.

“Veddy dire. Veddy dire. I assure you, you would have no pleasure.”

He watched as the doctor wrote furiously, asking more and more questions about his difficulties with all sorts of locomotion. Finally, the doctor stopped writing.

“I will give this report to the lawyer,” he said.

It was more, of course, than simply cutting corners and scamming insurance companies. It was downright fraudulent and potentially dangerous. Still, he could not reconcile the act with the person who had set it in motion. Worse, he had gone along knowingly as a participant not because of any greedy intent. It had become a means to an end, the end being Victoria Stewart.

A few days later, realizing he was hopelessly engaged emotionally, he called her.

“Have you assessed my condition?” he asked, deliberately larding his approach with lightness and humor.

“Yes, I have.”

“Veddy dire. Right?”

“Veddy.”

“I would like to discuss this case further, Counselor. A lengthy discussion, I'm afraid. Easily it will consume the time of drinks and dinner.”

She offered a surprisingly girlish giggle and he knew she had accepted his offer.

They met at a dimly lit, romantic Italian restaurant in the Village, which offered an ambiance that was the opposite of any professional pretension. Candles stuck in the mouths of empty Chianti bottles lighted the tables softly. In that light she looked particularly radiant and he could not keep his eyes from staring into hers. Why, he wondered. Why her? He had never experienced moments like this before.

He wanted to know everything about her life, to plumb the depths of her, to turn her inside out. But rather than push it in her face, he opted for keeping the conversation initially pointed in his direction.

“What exactly does a creative director in an advertising agency do?” she had asked.

“My job is to find different ways of communicating,” he said with some pride. Knack of unique expression was his special skill and considered high talent in the advertising business. “I'm a specialist in enticement. I find ways to buttonhole people through images and ideas.”

“In other words, your objective is to make people buy things they might not have thought about buying.”

He hadn't expected her directness. Although her looks belied the fact, especially in candlelight, her comment put things in perspective. He had probably fantasized away her hard edge.

“Okay then, let he or she who is without sin cast the first stone,” he said pointedly.

“Might as well clear the air before we get too deep into this,” she said laughing.

“Into what?”

“Into us.”

He was stunned by her candor. But she was exactly right.

“You sure don't leave much room for subtlety,” he said.

She shrugged, shook her head, and took a deep sip of the wine.